37 Content Discovery Tools To Find Great Social Media Content

If you’re a newbie blogger then it may be difficult to come up with a new topic each day (especially when you want to blog daily). As you probably know blogging is all about quality content and you really don’t have to blog everyday just to keep your blog active. When you publish a post you have to make sure that there’s something unique in your content and you’re adding some value to your posts.

And if you’re active on social media then it’s almost impossible to share only your own content all the time. Even if you can, you shouldn’t be doing that because your audience must be interested in other content related to your niche.

Be A Content Curator

If you want to become a good blogger then you have to become a good content curator. Like FastCompany has mentioned Content Curators are the new superheroes of the web. They say:

Curation is the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information. Curators provide a consistent update regarding what’s interesting, happening, and cool in their focus.

The good thing is… when you read, curate, and share more industry specific content you’ll get topic ideas naturally and you’ll know exactly what your audience want.

30+ Free Tools To Find Great Content To Share And Blog About

Today I’m going to feature 25 free tools on the Internet where you can find great content to share on your social media channels or to get topic ideas for your next blog post.

1. Feedly

Feedly is the awesomest RSS reader that exists today and is available on almost all platforms. It’s the best way to follow your favorite blogs with a lot of options to customize the user experience. Feedly even shows a “recommendation count” for each article based on its popularity in social media. So you can easily cherry-pick the content that you want to share.

2. LinkedIn Pulse

LinkedIn Pulse (formerly LinkedIn Today) shows some of the most popular industry specific content. It can’t replace an RSS reader but it definitely shows some of the best content from web influencers and top news sources. And you can follow only the topics that interest you.

3. Scoop.it

Scoop.it is perhaps the most popular content curation tool that allows you to create a board and then add content to it. The Scoop.it community will be able to follow your boards and you’ll be able to follow boards by others. It’s a great platform to find really awesome content that you can share or blog about.

4. Pocket

Pocket is a ‘read later’ app but they also provide an RSS feed for the most popular stories, videos, and images saved to Pocket. You can subscribe to that RSS feed here or by following @PocketHits on Twitter. Also try, Readability Top Reads.

5. Zite

Zite is a social magazine app. If you don’t have the time to check daily RSS feeds and other sources then Zite is a great way to track topics that interest you. You can also try Flipboard and Pulse.

6. Digg

The internet today is a social hub which is always full of news. Digg helps you find the most talked about stories present on the internet. Not only this, you can also find webpages and blog posts of your interest by using its search feature. If you find an interesting article then you can “Digg” or share on social media.

7. Digg Reader

Digg Reader is an RSS reader by Digg.com. You don’t really need another RSS reader when you have Feedly but I use Digg Reader to add feeds that are updating continuously. The interface of Digg Reader is also nice and you can share content to your Twitter or Facebook account in one-click. Another unique feature is that you can make your “Diggs” or “Saved” items public. I find it useful because I made my Diggs public and added that to Twitterfeed so that I don’t have to share it manually.

9. Inbound.org

10. Reddit

Reddit is dubbed as the homepage of the internet. It’s actually a place where people go to discover unheard conversations and stories. Reddit uses its powerful crowdsourcing to produce serious, funny and interesting contents that keep the readers hooked.

11. StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon may not be as popular as it used to be but still it’s a nice way to discover content based on your interests. It’s ideal for those who are always looking for something new to glance upon. Browse through your favorite content, like or dislike it and quickly share it amongst your peers. StumbleUpon recommends websites, articles, photos and videos.

12. Pinterest

Pinterest is widely known as an image sharing network. But it’s a powerful tool to curate content and that’s why many businesses are also active there. You can use Pinterest to find infographics, quotes, content (because each image links to a real webpage), videos, etc. that you want to share with your audience. Once you start using Pinterest, you will not only love it for its interface, but also for how it distributes the content you love hooking up with.

13. Imgur

Imgur is another image sharing site and it shows the most viral images of the day based on its popularity. It’s curated by its community in real-time through commenting, voting and sharing. Also try, FFFFOUND!. (an image bookmarking service).

14. Newsle

If you want to track news about you or your friends or anyone else then you can try Newsle. It notifies you when there is a news about people in your network. That way you’ll be able to discover content that you won’t find otherwise. Or try Google Alerts.

15. Prismatic

Prismatic is an interest network that you can use to follow topics and people you care about. It helps you find content that you can’t find anywhere else. It integrates with your social media channels to gather information about your interests.

16. Topsy

Topsy is a Twitter search engine that you can use to discover Tweets. It allows you to filter the results based on various parameters – links, photos, videos, influencers, time, etc. Topsy also allows you to identify influencers by keywords, person or company name and leads you to content trending as ‘hot’ for the specific industry.

17. Quora

Quora is not just a Q&A network it also shows Top Stories, Q&As, and Blog Posts.

18. Google+ What’s Hot

Google+ has a What’s Hot page where it highlights the most popular and interesting content. You can also join various communities to get tailored content based on your interests.

19. Alltop

Alltop features articles from a variety of sources. So you can find the top stories from Alltop home, or from Most Popular page, or from sub-categories based on your interests.

20. Delicious

After facing much trouble, Delicious is back on track. This simple plain social bookmarking site can be used to discover interesting links on the web. You can find interesting content from its Discover page or by doing a search using tags and keywords. You can also try Utopic. It’s also a social bookmarking tool and it can also be used to discover content as well by following top contributors or by following topics that interest you.

21. Twitter

If you are unable to track all the tweets by your followings then you can use Twitter Discover feature to find interesting tweets and trends. You can make use of Twitter lists, Hashtags, and TweetDeck app so that it’s easy to find interesting tweets.

22. Visual.ly

Visual.ly is the world’s marketplace for visual content and it’s the number one source for infographics. You can use their search function to find infographics related to specific keywords.

23. List.ly

List.ly allows its members to create lists on almost anything – images, videos or even texts. Makes lists and invites other community members to vote up and down for it. It is not only a great content curation tool but can be used to get great content ideas.

24. SlideShare

SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing and discovering presentations. Besides presentations, it also supports documents, infographics, PDFs, videos, webinars. You can use the Explore feature find the most popular or most liked content. Also try, TED.com(for ideas worth spreading).

25. Triberr

Triberr is a community of bloggers and influencers who come together to read and share great content. You can browse Triberr by categories so it’s a great source to find content based on your interests.

26. Tagboard

Tagboard is a social search and display tool powered by hashtags . You can search, interact, customize, moderate, and grow your hashtag communities from a centralized simple interface. You can create your own #tagboards in one-click and it will aggregate social media posts from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, App.net, & Vine in real-time.

27. ContentGems

ContentGems monitors over 200,000 news sources, blogs, social media channels, RSS feeds and it filters the content based on your interests, social signals, and other factors. You can then publish your content to social media or on your blog or other Content Management Systems (CMS).

ABOUT MAHESH (@maheshone)

Hey there, I’m Mahesh (@maheshone). I started learning and doing and experimenting web 2.0 stuff back in 2004 and eventually became a full-time computer nerd after graduation. Minterest is a digital marketing and technology journal that I founded in 2007 to feed my super curiosity (oh yeah, I’m a solo-blogger). I write about tech, marketing, and everything in between that excites me. And I love to work with small businesses to help them get the most out of the web. Outside of that, I'm equally passionate about the financial markets and I also spend a lot of time doing random things (see random facts about me). Say hi: @maheshone. Read More »